Image: Metallica [Official Press Photo]
The next Metallica studio album certainly won’t lack new material. Kirk Hammett has composed no less than 767 riffs, and now it’s "just" a matter of selecting the favorites. As he explained in an interview with Rolling Stone, this is no easy task - but we’ll have to wait quite a while for a new album anyway:
“I have 767 new ones for the next album. It is such a nightmare going through this stuff, too. And I’m the one responsible for all of it and I can’t do it…. I don’t foresee us starting the next album for at least another year because we’re still finishing the 72 Seasons tour. Once we fully finish this and go to all the outlying places like Asia and Australia and New Zealand, I think we’re gonna take a little bit of a break, not too much of one, and then we’re gonna get right back into it.”
Kirk Hammett’s Solo Debut on the Horizon
However, Kirk Hammett isn’t just working on material for future Metallica releases. In 2022, he released his first solo EP, Portals, and a full-length solo album is already in the works!
“I’m just actively getting ideas together for my solo album. I guess the best way to describe it is it’s gonna be a fusion of all sorts of styles…. All of a sudden I’m writing classical progressions, and all of a sudden I’m writing more heavy stuff and all of a sudden I’m writing like a funk thing…. There will be vocals because the songs that I wrote scream for vocals this time around."
Who will be handling vocals remains uncertain, aside from the fact that Hammett himself doesn’t plan to take the mic:
"I hope I’m not - I already have too much to do on stage…"
We’re excited for everything that’s coming - from solo projects to massive riffs on the next Metallica record!
